My predictions for Obama's first term

I will make a prediction, and know that if it does not come true everyone will forget that I made it. If it does come true, and I predict that my prediction will indeed come true (bonus prediction), then I will be celebrated by all the nutjobs who believe in crazy shit like astrology, tarot, that uttering 'Macbeth' in a theater is bad luck, fortune cookies (wait, those actually work), miracles, prayers, albino amulets, rhinoceros horn for potency, dowsing, angels, et cetera, et cetera.

Back to the prediction...

I have seen into the future, and the future looks grim. A week from now Obama will become our next President-elect in a landslide election [English, Danish], and both houses of congress will be ruled by the Democratic Party. Shortly after taking office, Obama will initiate his secret plan to fundamentally alter the fabric of America as we know it.

As promised, the first thing he will do is raise taxes. Not just for the rich who earns more than $250,000 per year. Everyone will be paying more, regardless of income, and the tax burden will eventually match that of northern European countries [English]. Both large and small companies will be taxed so hard that many lose the incentive to do business, and as a result many companies close down, and are eventually bought up by the state [English, Danish]. This includes all insurance companies (health, home, life, auto, etc.), all banks, and all car manufacturers, which will lead to a sharp decrease in the variety of products available to consumers. Only hybrid cars will be produced.

While hospital visits are going to be free for all [English], most people who really need the attention won't get it, because now everyone is forced to seek medical attention for minor problems such as headaches and hemorrhoids. Also, health care professionals will be working less efficiently, now that there is no longer any monetary incentive to work harder, and because the resurgence of labor unions will make it practically impossible to fire anyone.

Eventually, but definitely within his first term, Obama will have changed American society to a degree where no one no longer sees any incentive to work. Bureaucrats will rule society, and they will make it next to impossible to get anything done. Dissenters will no longer be allowed to publicly convene, and the police will crack down upon anyone who publicly disagrees with the administration's policies. Most newspapers and TV stations will cease to exist, and the rest will become state run under the control and censorship of the government.

Initially Obama will make many changes to save the environment [English], including making it illegal to trespass any and all national parks, state parks, national forests, and wildlife refuges. Hunting any of the government's wildlife will be made a federal offense by August 2009. However, about half way into his first term, Obama will change policy once again, and initiate government run mining, logging, and oil extraction in every corner of America, and most endangered species will go extinct as a result of government sponsored hunting and habitat destruction.

The Obama administration will not only legalize abortion as one of his first major policy changes, but will make it mandatory except for those who have obtained permission to have a child [English, Danish].

The Second Amendment is removed from the constitution in the first half of 2010 [English], which is followed by a sharp increase in crime rates, as people can no longer defend themselves. Criminals will be armed with automatic weapons which formerly belonged to members of the militia. Militias will be outlawed at the same time.

President Hussein Obama, as he will be officially known, publicly announces shortly before his second term, that he is in fact a Muslim, and has been a Muslim since birth [English]. He will claim that reports of him saying that he was a Christian were taken out of context. The government orders that mosques are built in every large city in America, and that all elected officials be sworn in on the Quran [English].

As Joe Biden predicted, Obama will be tested within six months after taking office [English, Danish]. In May 2009, to be exact. After having withdrawn all forces from Iraq and Afghanistan by April, the Taleban and surviving leaders of Saddam Hussein's Bath party take control of the vacated countries, which both launch coordinated attacks on American military bases in the Middle East. American casualties top those of the Vietnam War, as all bases are demolished. Subsequently, six countries in the region, including Iraq, Egypt, and Iran strike Jerusalem and Tel Aviv with long range missiles, destroying all Christian and Jewish historical monuments. Within 3 years from now Israel is divided into a southern zone occupied by Jordan, and a northern zone occupied by Syria. Obama acknowledges the new distribution of land, and negotiates a favorable trade agreement with the newly formed alliance of Middle East Countries. The US supplies the MEC with nuclear weapons technology and raw materials.

Blogs will be outlawed in November 2009.

5 comments:

Martin, I'm of course not serious that I think any of that will happen. Nor that I hope that it will. I think of it like going to the races and betting on the lame horse. If he wins, I get 5 million on the dollar odds.

Pleiotropy comes from the Greek πλείων pleion, meaning "more", and τρέπειν trepein, meaning "to turn, to convert". It designates the occurrence of a single gene affecting multiple traits, and is a hugely important concept in evolutionary biology.

I'm a postdoc at UC Santa Barbara.

All Many aspects of evolution interest me, but my research focus is currently on microbial evolution, adaptive radiation, speciation, fitness landscapes, epistasis, and the influence of genetic architecture on adaptation and speciation.